Tar Paper on Oak Flooring

So I've been asked to come post this on here as well. I had originally posted about this several years ago on ContractorTalk, and am just now getting around to taking care of this project.

Coming up on 4 years now, my Fiance and I bought a home together that was built in 1918. It had originally been the first public school built in my county and township. In 1930, it was bought by a farm couple and converted into a home, although it really wasn't done right.

The place was a complete wreck when we bought it, and slowly we are fixing it up and turning it into a nice, liveable home.

During the interior demolition when we first acquired it, we found layer after layer after layer of linoleum on the floors of the living room and kitchen.

We then found out that in the living room, underneath the linoleum, was this black tar paper and glue stuck right down onto the hardwood floors.

Nothing was taking this stuff off. We tried EVERYTHING from gasoline/diesel/kerosene, paint stripper, paint thinner, Goof off, and the list goes on and on. It basically came down to the only way to take it off was many hours worth of scraping.

After scraping by myself for several months, and not really getting anywhere, I gave up and we moved onto the rest of the house.

This is an account of the process we are going through at the moment to refinish the floors.

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Tar Paper on Oak Flooring

To continue on -

Last weekend we began attempting to sand this sticky mess off. We went through about 10 sheets of 40 grit on Sunday, and 5 on Monday, only to have them get gummed up within seconds of changing the paper.

The tar on the paper would then just smear streaks of tar down the floor as we continued to sand.

We decided to stop for the week and find somewhere that carried 20-24grit paper. We found somewhere yesterday, and are scheduled to continue the sanding this weekend.

Here is the floor as of right now

Sunday -

Monday

The same few boards as shown in a previous photo

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Tar Paper on Oak Flooring

wow the floors are looking good. I know that tar is miserable to get off. What I like to do and it goes through a lot of sanding discs but.... I use my floor edger. with 36 grit discs. they grind the stuff off and then go back over with the drum sander and clean up the swirls from the edger

Tar Paper on Oak Flooring

Sorry it's taken so long to post more.

It's turned out that the floor isn't oak, but is Douglas Fir. Of all the boards in the floor, I just had to pick the 3 that were not original. There are three oak boards in the middle of the room that marks where a hallway had originally been separating the classroom from the entryway.

Anways - we got the first finish on the floor this morning. It's looking good so far. We went with a satin finish, even though in the photo it's still kind of wet and glossy looking.